Exploring the Crossroads of Art, Craft, Reading, and Creative Writing with Alisa Golden

Monday, December 17, 2012

Questions for Your Next Book Art Project

The night after I wrote the long post "Where Do You Get Your Ideas?" I dreamed a much shorter way to begin: using question words can kickstart a book art project.Who. Who is the book about? Who is the audience?What. What is the subject? What do you want to show? What do you want to say?Where. Locate the setting. Use the book structure itself as the place.When. When does it occur? One hundred years ago? Now? The "now" that happens each time someone views the book? A minute from now? Projecting into the distant future?Why. Why does this material have to be a book? Why is it important to you?Which. Be specific, not generic. If you mention a rock, which rock? If you draw a flower, draw a specific flower.How. How will you reveal the contents? Is the pacing fast? Slow? Are the story, information or images hidden in pockets or behind doors? Presented cumulatively? Shown sequentially? How do you want the reader to feel?Perhaps it is a shorter way to think about books, but it is still a long process. Start answering and sketching and moving materials around, then allow incubation time!

3 comments:

one of the things that was poetically reinforced for me at Haystack this summer...by Naomi Shihab Nye [leading the writing workshop] wasthe usefulness of 'actively' writing listswhether of words or questions or ideas

the notion of setting a goal of writing 9 or 16 or 31 questions about something. it's a very valuable practice.

in our daily journaling at school, i sometimes have the kids write lists...especially after reading the absolutely true diary of a part time indian (sherman alexie) in which arnold writes lists as lifelines...they don't think lists are writing (and some of my colleagues don't either).

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About Me

Alisa Golden is the author of Making Handmade Books: 100+ Bindings, Structures & Forms (Lark Crafts, 2011), and Painted Paper: Techniques & Projects for Handmade Books & Cards (Lark Books, 2008), among others. She makes books under the imprint never mind the press and teaches bookmaking and letterpress printing at California College of the Arts. She holds a BFA in printmaking from California College of Arts and Crafts (now CCA), and an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University. Her stories, poems, and art have been published widely, and she founded and edits the online and print magazine, Star 82 Review.

Golden is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. Earned fees are recycled back into books reviewed for blog posts.